


We Are All Starfish

by luna_plath



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rarepair_shorts, Deathly Hallows AU, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_plath/pseuds/luna_plath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being kept in the Malfoy dungeons, Luna tries to find herself.  She finds Harry along the way.  For my rarepair_shorts prompt "in cold blood."</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are All Starfish

The stone floor is hard and unyielding, but Luna has learned to relax against it. Every night in the Malfoy dungeons she curls up in the corner, a few paces away from Mr. Olivander, and lets the cold seep into her. She becomes limp and silent, almost like the stone itself, until the last day. 

That is the day that Harry Potter comes.

\--

Shell Cottage is so beautiful it doesn’t feel real to Luna. She spends most of her time on the beach looking for starfish that have gotten stuck on the shore. She tries to find every one so she can return it to the ocean where it belongs.

The objects around her seem too far away, the air around her feels too empty, people’s faces look too real. Surrounded by the salt and the rolling wind, it’s easy to forget about the hard stone of the dungeon. Luna finds herself walking the same paths around the property as if in a daze. 

One day Fleur asks her if she’s looking for shells, if she’d like some company. Luna smiles and says she’s just walking, that you begin to appreciate walking when you spend months locked in a stone room, but she isn’t telling the whole truth. She is looking for something, but it isn’t seashells.

More than anything, it feels like she’s searching for herself.

Sometimes Luna’s path intersects with Dean’s, or Harry’s. Dean spends most of his time drawing the same landscape of the beach, capturing the light at different hours of the day, the shore at different tides. She prefers walking with Harry. He doesn’t ask if she wants company or if she’ll hand him a quill or if she thinks Mr. Olivander looks any better today—he just falls into step beside her and it’s perfect because he knows he doesn’t have to ask.

One day they’re standing in the shallowest part of the shore, cold and shivering at the edge of the gray water. The cold is purifying in its intensity, like the harsh air will wash out everything they want to forget.

She hands him a conch shell and Harry pitches it into the waves with all his strength. He’s shaking but Luna knows it’s not from the cold. His hands clench and she can tell that something in him is breaking apart, some part of him is at the bottom of the ocean with that conch shell, but she doesn’t say anything. Harry clenches his fists, his silence louder than the crashing of the waves.

Luna takes his hand—cold, hard, unyielding—and waits. His fist is like the dungeon floor beneath her fingertips. 

After some time, once his breathing slows and the sea covers their feet in icy water, Harry loosens his hand, threading his fingers through her own. They stand like that while the world changes like the tides, both of them looking for the place where they belong.

**fin.**


End file.
